This time there was no longer any doubt; it was at the Traitor’s Cross that lesser criminals were executed.  Bonacieux had flattered himself in believing himself worthy of St. Paul or of the Place de Greve; it was at the Traitor’s Cross that his journey and his destiny were about to end!  He could not yet see that dreadful cross, but he felt somehow as if it were coming to meet him.  When he was within twenty paces of it, he heard a noise of people and the carriage stopped.  This was more than poor Bonacieux could endure, depressed as he was by the successive emotions which he had experienced; he uttered a feeble groan which night have been taken for the last sigh of a dying man, and fainted.

14 The man of meung

The crowd was caused, not by the expectation of a man to be hanged, but by the contemplation of a man who was hanged.

The carriage, which had been stopped for a minute, resumed its way, passed through the crowd, threaded the Rue St. Honore, turned into the Rue des Bons Enfants, and stopped before a low door.

The door opened; two guards received Bonacieux in their arms from the officer who supported him.  They carried him through an alley, up a flight of stairs, and deposited him in an antechamber.

All these movements had been effected mechanically, as far as he was concerned.  He had walked as one walks in a dream; he had a glimpse of objects as through a fog.  His ears had perceived sounds without comprehending them; he might have been executed at that moment without his making a single gesture in his own defense or uttering a cry to implore mercy.

He remained on the bench, with his back leaning against the wall and his hands hanging down, exactly on the spot where the guards placed him.

On looking around him, however, as he could perceive no threatening object, as nothing indicated that he ran any real danger, as the bench was comfortably covered with a well-stuffed cushion, as the wall was ornamented with a beautiful Cordova leather, and as large red damask curtains, fastened back by gold clasps, floated before the window, he perceived by degrees that his fear was exaggerated, and he began to turn his head to the right and the left, upward and downward.

At this movement, which nobody opposed, he resumed a little courage, and ventured to draw up one leg and then the other.  At length, with the help of his two hands he lifted himself from the bench, and found himself on his feet.

At this moment an officer with a pleasant face opened a door, continued to exchange some words with a person in the next chamber and then came up to the prisoner.  “Is your name Bonacieux?” said he.

“Yes, Monsieur Officer,” stammered the mercer, more dead than alive, “at your service.”

“Come in,” said the officer.

And he moved out of the way to let the mercer pass.  The latter obeyed without reply, and entered the chamber, where he appeared to be expected.